Oh. Hello. We didn’t see you there, Atlantic City. Glad you’re here though. Can we talk?

You remember that one time, when we paid $35 round-trip to take the Greyhound bus down, and the bus dropped us off at Showboat, where the host gave us a voucher for $25 worth of play in the machines, and we parlayed that into a $225 win? And then we took that money and bought into a poker game at Borgata later that night, where we won enough money to buy into a bigger poker game the next day, and walked away with nearly $1,000? We remember it like it was yesterday, except it was actually two days ago. Those were good times, Atlantic City, right?

Here’s the thing though. Winning money isn’t everything. Gambling we can do in so many other places. Like in Las Vegas, where everything’s so cheap and everyone’s generally happy to have our business. In Las Vegas, a few lost dollars in the slots translates into invitations to free weekends at Luxor, with $150 worth of play, instead of a measly $25. If we don’t want to go to Vegas, we can drive up to Connecticut, where they have plenty of tables, without the sleaze and dreck that make you so unpleasant, Atlantic City. So unpleasant.

It’s not just the fact that you’re imperfect, though. We’ve known that for a long time now. It’s that you think we’re suckers.

You think that we’ll keep coming back, forever, to take your abuse. Look – we’ve always known that eventually it was going to end between us. For years now, we’ve been keeping our heads down, playing a little, leaving before we get in too deep, maybe on the way home stopping by one of your fantastic old-school red sauce joints, Chef Vola’s if we can get a table. Maybe we’ll just do hoagies for the road from White House, or a plate of nice meatballs from Angelo’s. If the weather’s good, we’ll do a little stroll on the Boardwalk, for old times sake. In recent years, we added a night at Borgata, or better yet, The Water Club to our itinerary. Because they’re nice, and why not stay a little while longer, if it’s nice?

Here’s the thing, Atlantic City. We’re done. You’ve crossed the line one last time. What’s that? You can change, you say? Girl, please. For once in your life, be serious.

Here’s how. Start by rounding up your workforce. Then, drive them into the sea. Surely you know, Atlantic City, that your people are the worst ambassadors a tourism-dependent destination could possibly ever, in their worst nightmares, find themselves burdened with. No, we’re not here to union bash. Unions are great, until they stop giving a damn about the success of their industry, at which point they become self-defeating and stupid. By all means, fight for your rights, but when you show up to work in a tourist town, your ass had better be smiling. Seriously. Only your unions, Atlantic City, would initiate the fight against smoking on casino floors. Only your people would be so unbelievably dumb. Go to the casinos on the Canadian border and see what happens when you ban smoking in a place that depends on people being distracted and happy for you to make money. Ask the people at the Caesars Palace in Windsor, Ontario, how great it was to have a smoke-free casino. Go now, before the rest of the employees get laid off and they close the place down. While we’re at it, Atlantic City, you’ve got to stop letting your people put up billboards, shouting at people coming into town, warning us off this or that casino because they don’t feel that they’re getting a good enough deal.

Hey — guess what. We’re not total jerks. We believe that everyone deserves to make a living wage. But you know what – plenty of Americans who are not in unions perform their duties, duties they are paid to do, with a smile. So many of your people are unionized, and they can’t even do their jobs with a scowl. Scratch that. They can’t do their jobs, period.

Frankly, Atlantic City, you are so incredibly unpleasant to be around. You’re an ocean of mediocrity, an ocean as vast as the one you stare out to so blankly, year after year.

What is in the municipal water supply there that makes you so confused? How can you not understand that when people come down to see you for a short break, the last thing they want is a mountain of frustration? You’re not St. Barts. You’re not the French Riviera. You don’t get to act like our presence is an affront, or an inconvenience; like every time we visit, we’re interrupting your important conversation. Whether we’re, oh, let’s say, at the bar at Sonsie trying to get some service, in the Players Club line at Showboat checking our status, trying to get a drink in the high roller area at Borgata or hoping for basic courtesies at the Tropicana, why do you always fail so hard that it’s almost funny?

Seriously — what is it about you, Atlantic City? Is there some double-super-secret economic engine, all fired up in the back room, that we don’t know about? Is gaming just a second job you don’t really have time for anymore? Because you don’t seem all that smart. If you were, you’d have figured out a way to keep more of the profits from tourism in town by now. You’re home to barely 35,000 people at this point, Atlantic City — with all the money pouring in, why aren’t you the richest little city in New Jersey? And if you don’t know how to answer that, why not? We’d always hoped you weren’t as dumb as you looked — please, prove us wrong.

Like we said, Atlantic City – it hasn’t all been bad. There have been some nice times. Enough to lure us back when we learned about your first annual Food & Wine Festival, sponsored by Harrah’s. Hey, we thought. You’re making an effort! You’re trying something new. Hell, you even signed up Emeril. That’s a thing, right?

So, the other day, we hopped on board the Greyhound bus, which dropped us off at the Showboat, and we walked down the Boardwalk, wading through the colorful sea of humanity, dodging the striking workers in front of the Caesars, where we picked up our passes for the opening night pizza bash, which was going to be hosted by Tom Colicchio. Surely he’d have helped curate an interesting group of pizzerias, this being South Jersey and all, and him being Tom Colicchio and all.

And then. Then.

The event began, and we walked in to the ballroom. Everything was bathed in purple light. The furniture was all white. There were half-naked people standing around like statues. It was like the clock stopped in 2007, where goofy hedonism was still en vogue.

It wasn’t the half-naked people bathed in glitter that everyone was staring at, though. It was the sign inside the door, announcing drink tickets. For sale.

Drink tickets! At a casino, where you can drink for free at the slot machines? At a party, where you paid $50 to get in? And the drinks weren’t cheap, either. Oh, Atlantic City.

It gets worse, but of course you already know this — we’re talking about you. Then there was the pizza. It sucked. It didn’t just suck, suck, it sucked so hard, we almost got sucked into a vortex of suck. There was McCormick & Schmick’s, a chain restaurant (there’s one at Harrah’s, which explains how they ended up here, Harrah’s being the sponsor and all), serving something called a Clam Chowder Pizza, which is exactly how it sounds, and while it wasn’t inedible, there we are, thinking: Tom Colicchio + this trainwreck = how much did they pay him? There were a couple uneventful local pizzerias, but then there was Georges Perrier.

Georges Perrier. Mr. Le Bec-Fin. Mr. French Cooking. Mr. Best Restaurant in Philadelphia For The Last 100 Years, Or Whatever.

Standing there, muttering, refusing to make eye contact with the hungry hordes, dishing out miniscule squares of tomato and gruyere flatbread, slathered in dijon mustard. Mustard! And he was doing it with his bare hands. His BARE HANDS, Atlantic City.

Mustard on a pizza? That’s the sort of wrong-headedness you’d expect to find on a Tyler Florence menu, if Tyler Florence would ever open a restaurant instead of just being the errand boy for Applebees. Or, it could have been that the chef behind the table was very, very angry at having to be at an event celebrating something as pedestrian as pizza, in a casino. In Atlantic City.

Walking around the ballroom, it was impossible not to feel really badly for everyone. It was impossible to not hope that every single one of them was there on a casino comp, which would turn the debacle into nothing more than a time-waster, instead of a very expensive mistake.

Of course, because this is you we are talking about, Atlantic City, you couldn’t even keep the bad pizza in stock. Everyone ran out, almost immediately, which is a little embarrassing for you, seeing as there were only 6 or so pizza makers represented at the event.

At least — at least! — there were very few people were at the cash bar. That made us feel great. A lady came up to the line of people waiting for George Perrier’s mustard pizza, asking if anyone wanted drink tickets. Everyone just stared at her, refusing to speak. That was kind of awesome. You may think we’re suckers, Atlantic City, but the moment we all walked into that room, it’s almost a sure thing that very few of us did not realize we’d been played for fools.

That may not have been the last straw for everyone, but for us it sure was. So, we left.

We went to the Water Club, because this is how things usually go when we can’t take another minute of the Boardwalk’s unending mediocrity. We hailed a cab. Our cabdriver refused to speak to us, refused to roll up the windows and put on the air conditioner even though it was 90 degrees and the air was as thick as soup. He didn’t forget to turn on his favorite music though, without asking us.

Of course, you already know this, Atlantic City, but does it not bother you that even at The Water Club, the best hotel in town, the staff is so grossly unprofessional and weirdly casual? It’s always been this way — checking in is, inexplicably, the worst thing about a stay at The Water Club. Well, that and the fact that the hotel does strange things like close the fitness center at 8 o’clock in the evening, or make their guests wear stupid armbands during their whole stay if they want to use the pool, all this after too many minutes of dithering and staring at a computer screen, as if staring at it just a little longer would unlock some sort of hidden answer to a question they don’t even know how to ask.

Then again, apart from wasting our time once again, it wasn’t the end of the world. Also, everything was sort of alright by this point, because we knew that there was a decent dinner coming up. Thank God, Atlantic City, that at least you have all those great restaurants at Borgata. How much do we love sliding into a booth at Michael Mina’s Seablue for the lobster pot pie? Or, in the simple pleasures department, how about that 24-hour Fatburger downstairs, the one below the poker room? The staff may be as dismal as they are on the Boardwalk, but at least the food is great.

That night, we ate at Fornelletto, the new Italian restaurant. Chef Stephen Kalt’s skills were on display everywhere, from the simple marinara pie ala napoli to the wonderful sea urchin and crab spaghetti to the salt-baked fish with a fresh salsa verde that almost made us forget. Our waiter, Giuseppe, was a consummate professional. Bobby Flay was there, wearing a beret.

None of this was a surprise, Atlantic City. Kalt is a star, a guy who has excelled at projects in both New York and Las Vegas, places you can only dream of from your pitiful perch down there in South Jersey. Fornelletto has been open less than a month, and they’re already doing 500-plus covers on weekend evenings. For Kalt’s sake, we hope he gets to open up someplace else, real soon.

Speaking of someplace else: Where was Tom Colicchio that night? He sure wasn’t at the pizza bash when we left. Wherever he was, we hope he was feeling just a tiny bit of shame.